Ty’s father Steve and his coworker Bill arrived at the site very early in the morning to work on the deck. Those of us staying at the student house arrived later - around 7:45am - and were immediately put to work. It was Cathy’s first day at the construction site, and boy did she come prepared: she brought her steel toed boots and laptop. Cathy, Gerardo and I were asked to separate the panels of the deck into their respective north and south locations.
The deck was designed for modularity, so it was split up into different panels. While this might be a risky or dangerous for normal wood, our deck is made of a material called TimberTech. It’s a relatively new material on the patio and deck markets, and is incredibly resistant to fading or warping. Each panel was a 43 inch long square that weighed about fifty or sixty pounds apiece, so it took two of us to move them to their respective destinations and it won’t move in the slightest. It was a lot of exercise, to say the least.
Steve and Bill are great people. They’re incredibly helpful and always have a sense of humor about them. In fact, I have to say that’s the case of all the contractors we have hired. All of our consultants and staff hired outside of the university are incredibly nice people and have a great amount of enthusiasm for this project. All of us see this project as an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and despite the struggles we have gone through we find joy in every part of our work.
Debra, Ty, and Yasmine were traveling around Virginia and Maryland looking for good nurseries. They spent the better part of a day going from place-to-place shopping for the most interesting plants they could find. They were thinking of an autumn motif.
In the meantime Brian, Agustine and Nora were trying to get the batteries installed in the mechanical room. The batteries we are using are incredibly large and weigh 600 pounds apiece. Those elements combined with the tight organization of the mech room’s organization made the installation of the batteries an intense operation with little room for error.
During the construction a news team stopped by from Jamestown and wanted to interview us. The newswoman originally met with Brian, and Nora came by to give her an information packet and I walked by to give her a construction helmet (we must always try to be as safe as possible). All three of us took turns answering her questions; I have not been with the project as long as either Nora or Brian so I took a figurative step back and let them do most of the talking. Ultimately the newswoman chose Brian for the interview.
James returned from his meeting later and got to meet with the woman as well, and also got an interview in. He mentioned that one of the stations of the newswoman’s network broadcasts in Seattle, and so he called his father to watch out for an article on the Decathlon.
Media contacts are an interesting thing. Whenever we’re told we’ll be in a report on television we have to ask for the newsperson’s business card, location of broadcast and time of broadcast. Afterwards we get into contact with Santa Clara University’s media coordinator so she can obtain a copy and put it onto our website. The Solar Decathlon also has a media representative that stops by to inform us of people who will be arriving the next day for interviews or photographs.
Lunchtime arrived later and since the north end of the deck was completed we decided to eat our grub there. It’s amazing how much we’ve completed in such little time. We were also lucky in that we had plenty of shade to relax under while on deck. But afterwards it was back to work, and plenty of work was waiting for us after we finished eating.
Nighttime came and Yasmine, Ty and Debra finally returned from their horticulture trek and had plenty of pots, trees, bushes, flowers, and an assortment of other plants to use in our house and on the deck. The entire northern half of the deck had been completed by then, and the planters had been placed as well, so we placed all of the plants there. Meanwhile, Nora and Cathy spent their evening driving around in our GEM to Baja Fresh to get our dinner and arrived back to the site just as we finished unloading all the plants from our second U-haul truck.
Finally, Mike gave his last goodbyes as the photovoltaic panels had been installed and functioning properly. I do not know whether or not he will return for the disassembly period, but either way we are very grateful for his services.